


Two from the North

by opalmatrix



Category: Chronicles of the Kencyrath - P. C. Hodgell
Genre: Cultural Differences, First Meetings, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Were-Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 08:17:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2805800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/pseuds/opalmatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night's leave in Kothifir was supposed to help Torisen recover from his experiences in Urakarn.  It wouldn't have worked at all if he hadn't met another sojourner from the north.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two from the North

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Minutia_R](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/gifts).



> The requester wanted "How Tori and Grimly met and became friends." Their canon first meeting (in _The Sea of Time_ ) was very brief, so this is actually their _second_ meeting. I hope that's OK! Thanks very much to my beta team: [yhlee (etothey)](http://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/pseuds/yhlee), [whymzycal](http://archiveofourown.org/users/whymzycal/pseuds/whymzycal), [smillaraaq](http://archiveofourown.org/users/smillaraaq/pseuds/smillaraaq), and [estara](http://estara.livejournal.com/).

Night had fallen, wreathing Kothifir in darkness. Kothifir struck back with lights and tumult. As Torisen stepped from the lift cage onto the pavement of the Forecourt, he was awash in movement, music, shouting, and flares, as overwhelming to his senses as the roiling sea.

Revelers pranced and fought in the streets, dressed in ruffles and silks, leather or rags. Performers juggled torches, batons, knives, or live cats, and clowns and acrobats leapt over each other's backs or stood on each other's shoulders. A solemn conjurer pulled silk scarves and white mice from a child's ears while a girl in a short, spangled tunic and knee-high gilded boots ate live coals and breathed out flames. Gangs of apprentices and journeymen boasted to each other and brawled. A troop of elderly women marched by in their festival best, pounding small drums and shaking tambourines to the rhythm of their chanting, and children in striped singlets and drawers skipped and tumbled through twirling ropes. Urchins eeled their way through the riot, picking pockets and snatching purses. A lissome young man in a silver jerkin and black leggings writhed sinuously with an enormous striped serpent twining about his torso to the mournful notes of a shawm. The melancholy little tune struggled against the powerful yet melodic voice of a stout lady in bright blue and yellow who sang ribald verses to the twanging and tweeting of the twin musician boys sitting at her feet.

Torisen stopped and stared for a moment. What had Harn been thinking when he suggested that a night out on the town would do Tori some good, now that he had been released from the infirmary? This revelry didn't look like it would provide anything but cuts and bruises, an empty purse, and a headache the next morning. Nevertheless, he squared his shoulders and pushed his way through the crowd. Colored lanterns swayed overhead along ropes strung from building to catwalk to tower, and stalls in the alleys and side streets tempted passersby with mince tarts, pickled eggs, pastries dripping honey, and sweetmeats of nut paste and gelatin and candied crickets, to be washed down with date wine or mint shrub or lemon flip or rose milk. Here was a slack rope upon which a dark boy hopped and danced, the torches on the balconies around him striking gleams of gold and blue from his braided and oiled hair, and ahead a Coman ten-command watched him with awe and terror, eyes wide and lips agape. As Torisen slipped by, one big Kendar lad covered his mouth and turned away, gagging with nerves and height sickness.

The groups of revelers grew fewer and more sedate as Tori approached the Rose Tower. Now the food and drink stalls were replaced by walled gardens around the bases of the noblest of the colorful cloud-piercing buildings, set with tables and chairs at which graceful servers set platters of delicacies and crystal flasks of drink before the richly dressed patrons who dined beneath lamps of iridescent glass hanging from elaborate wrought iron stands. Soft music drifted out into the street, flutes and bells and sweet-toned harps, dulcimers and citterns, the tunes fading discreetly before they could clash inharmoniously with their neighbors. From one such party, Torisen heard a young man's voice declaiming in _rendish:_

_Rank on rank of stone and sand, dry before my eyes  
Not tumbled and rolling waters and rocks where my own boyhood died —"_

Or that's what Torisen thought the speaker said: this seemed to be classical _rendish,_ not the modern speech of the streets of Kothifir. The passion and sadness in the speaker's voice reached him in a way the words did not, and he stopped in the street, listening and wondering who was reciting sad poetry on a night when Kothifir worked out its worries in raucous revelry.

The poem wound to an end, but instead of restrained applause and exclamations of praise, the listeners broke into laughter and jeers. "Hark to the Wild Man of the Woods, how he howls for his home!" chortled one loud voice. 

"Here's a silver korash," said a woman, too sweetly: "The host will be glad to trade you some wine for it."

"You are all too kind," said the speaker, his voice slurred in a way that it had not been while he recited. "I will make my farewells, then."

"Here, this will help you along," cried another man, and there was a yelp of pain. A lanky figure stumbled through the vine-wreathed gateway and crashed painfully to his knees on the pavement before Torisen.

I should have known, thought Tori, his jaw tightening with anger. It was the wolver whom he had seen with Rose Iron-thorn and her daughter before his sojourn in Urakarn, drunk and claiming to be a court poet.

The shaggy young man sat back on his haunches, rubbing his knees and whimpering faintly. Torisen strode over and offered a bandaged hand. "Get up," he said, and his exasperation sharpened his voice. "Why are you doing this?"

The wolver looked up and blinked. "A Kencyr. Do I know you?"

"Not really," said Torisen. "I found you drunk outside the Rose Tower one night a few weeks ago, just after King Kruin's death."

"Oh. _Oh!_ You're the fellow who ruined the Gnasher's assass … ass … curse it! You stopped him from killing Krothen!"

Tori sighed. "Yes. That was me. "

The wolver rose slowly, then stood swaying like a tree in a gale. One of the servers looked out from the dining garden and scowled at them. Tori scowled back. "Let's go somewhere else, someplace where no one gives the side-eye to visitors far from home."

"Good idea," agreed the wolver, amiably, swaying in Tori's direction. His breath was foul. "Where shall we go?"

"You tell me. I'm a stranger here."

The wolver shifted from foot to foot, looking down the avenue and its cross streets. "The Crescent," he said at last. "Brynelle feeds me sometimes."

"Where's that?"

"Thish way."

They left the avenue and followed a maze of cross streets and alleys. Although the wolver wavered and wandered from side to side on the pavement, his sense of direction seemed true. From the glimpses of the festivities Tori could see from time to time, he deduced that they were heading back toward the Forecourt, but several streets to the east. At last they arrived at a tall, thin building apparently squashed between two square towers. Above the door, a crescent moon carved from wood suspended a lantern from its upper tip. The wolver wrestled with the door latch. Just as Tori was about to push him aside and try it himself, the latch gave up, the door swung inward, and the wolver sprawled across the threshold.

"That hurt," he remarked calmly.

A tall person with her hair wrapped in a spangled _cheche_ fastened with a web of silken cords sighed melodramatically. She put the tray she was holding down on one of the half dozen tables in the dimly lit room. "You again, wolf boy," she growled. Her voice was a gravelly baritone. "Don't you ever learn?"

"I performed at Lydek's, by invitation. They laughed again, Brynelle. And one of them kicked me into the street."

Brynelle offered a hand that sparkled with rings and pulled the wolver to his feet with no visible effort. "Have you eaten?" she asked Torisen. Her face was long and horsey, with large and beautiful eyes.

"No, mistress," said Torisen. 

"Dinner. Half a koresh. Do you need a room? If so, you'll have to share his. I'm full up."

"Umm … ."

"It's a very clean room," said the wolver, swaying and rubbing one elbow. "And already paid for. I can tell you my tale."

Tori hadn't planned to spend the night, but no one expected him back at camp until noon tomorrow. "I suppose so."

Brynelle nodded and turned her head to shout into the door at the back of the inn. "Tallerin! Watch the house." A plump woman in a buff-colored apron and a striped cloth twisted about her head came out, wiping her hands on a rag. Brynelle waved Tori and the wolver toward a narrow doorway through which a flight of stairs could be seen, ascending. She grabbed a small lantern hanging from a hook near the doorway and led them up.

And up. And up. The place apparently had rooms on every floor, although the glimpses Torisen had showed them to be small and few. On the seventh floor, Brynelle stepped away from the landing and opened a door to a small room toward the front of the building. She lit a hanging lamp, whose light showed a modest bed, a wooden table with two plain chairs set before an open window, and a washstand. The wolver promptly collapsed onto the mat that occupied most of the floor.

"Oh no," said Torisen, and reached down to shake him by the shoulder.

"Oh yes," said Brynelle, and her voice was calm. "Not to worry; he always comes round quickly enough. I'll send the lads up with hot water, supper, and a draught for the wolver."

With that, she left them alone and shut the door behind her. Tori went to look out the window. At this distance, the lights and noise of the revelry on the main streets seemed charming and picturesque. The wolver snorted in his sleep, and when Tori turned to look at him, his form shifted until there was a large, grey wolf curled up on the mat.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and then there was a knock at the door. Two sturdy lads of perhaps twelve years stood there, one holding a steaming pail of hot water, the other a massive tray loaded with plates of spiced meat, flat loaves of bread, and stewed vegetables, along with two jugs and two pottery cups. Torisen stepped aside and let them attend to the table and the washstand.

"This one's the draught for the wolf," explained the taller boy, pointing to the smaller of the two jugs. "Want us to do it?"

"I guess so," said Tori, puzzled.

"Have to dose him," explained the boy. "Or he'll be sick as … well, as a dog."

The wolver's snout shifted, seeming to shrink back into his face, and his mouth became more human-looking. "Not a dog," he growled.

The boys looked at each other and rolled their eyes. The smaller boy threw himself on the wolver and pinned him down, while the other set the jug on the floor nearby and grabbed the wolver's head, jabbing his thumbs into the hinges of the wolver's jaw.

"Arragh," groaned the wolver, mouth wide. The boy snatched up the jug and poured its white and foaming contents down his throat. Torisen watched wide-eyed, expecting the boy's hand to be torn off or the wolver to choke to death. However, he soon realized that the wolver was swallowing thirstily and was not even making any attempt to throw off the boy who held him down.

When all of the draught was gone, the boys let go of their patient. The wolver worked his jaws for a moment, wrinkling his snout and sticking his tongue out like a dog who has tasted wormwood. Then he belched hugely and started to change back into his mannish shape.

The elder boy grinned at Torisen. "We've had loads of practice," he said. "Need anything else, ran?"

Torisen shook his head and pulled a few copper coins from his belt purse, "Not 'ran' — I'm just a clerk."

The younger boy whispered in his colleague's ear, and the elder nodded. "Not any bandage linen? Brynelle said to ask; she's a dab hand at bandaging."

Tori looked blankly at his hands for a moment. The wolver's affairs had distracted him entirely from his injuries. "Maybe in the morning, when I've washed up."

"Sure thing, master," said the boy, as he took the coppers. "C'mon, Sordak." The boys left, shutting the door behind them firmly and then clattering down the stairs.

The wolver shuddered and stood up stiffly. His eyes seemed clearer, though, despite their red rims. "I hate that stuff."

"It seems to have worked."

"Oh, aye. Brynelle mixes a good draught. She was a surgeon's assistant for the watch before she bought the Crescent. What's for supper? I smell Tallerin's grilled goat."

Torisen indicated the farther chair, and the wolver sat. "My name's Grimly, from the Grimly Holt," he said, and reached for the meat.

"Oh. We passed it on the way south. I'm Torisen Knorth." The name flew out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

"Oh." The wolver blinked, and his expression sharpened. "Knorth? Really?"

Torisen, horrified, couldn't help glancing at the open window. Ridiculous. They were seven floors up, and he'd not seen any catwalks when he looked out earlier. The wolver nodded, slowly. "I'll not say a word, friend. We're both far from home."

"Speaking of that," said Tori, glad to be able to turn the subject, "How did you come to be at the court here in Kothifir?"

The wolver was snatching bites of goat from a large rib. "Well, as to that … King Kruin was a famous hunter, y'know. Everything from the hare to the rhi-sar, he'd pursued, caught, and killed. The walls of his apartments in the Rose Tower were covered with hides and mounted heads of the beasts he'd slaughtered. He was determined to add a wolver to his trophies … ."

"How'd you discourage him?"

"We wolvers ourselves are not so backward at hunting." Grimly grinned, his sharp teeth gleaming. "Kruin was lucky to see the next day's dawn alive, and many of his troop were none so lucky. In the end, he had to concede defeat but invited our people to visit him here in Kothifir. But none were interested: we were wary that we might end up as his trophies after all."

"None but you? What made you decide to go?"

The wolver swallowed another lump of goat. "Now, Kruin had with him a poet, to chant _rendish_ poetry by the fire to pass the evenings away. I'd never heard such a thing. The words were as bright as the flames, as brilliant as the moon, as sharp as a cub's first teeth. I couldn't stop thinking about it, and in the end, didn't I have to make the journey south to find the poet, so I could learn to create poems myself?"

"And so he taught you."

"He did. I loved it. But what I didn't know was that he had fallen from favor. Not that he had done anything wrong to anger Kruin or the great folk of his court — it was just that his poetry was out of style. He taught me honest craft, he did. But he knew that it wasn't a true poet that the courtiers would see when I stood before them, but a wild thing that played at being a man, speaking poetry of the high-minded sort that had pleased their grandfathers. He hoped it would amuse them, because he knew I couldn't be anything better than amusing. I, who had hoped to snag my listeners' hearts as he did mine."

The wolver dropped his bone on his platter and stared at the tabletop. Tori remembered the cruel laughter of the revellers in the garden and once again felt anger on Grimly's behalf. "Then why do you keep doing it? Why don't you just return to the Holt?"

Grimly hunched his shoulders and looked at Tori out of the corners of his eyes. "So the young wolver comes home, and his grand plan has come to nothing? Born of a people who are the terror of the Holt, he returns to say he has been laughed out of the King's place by the King's lackeys, carrion-eating scavengers all? That's a tale to spit at; that's a wolver who's less than nothing."

"Oh." Torisen thought about the endless hazing he'd endured at the hands of the Caineron and their allies. In truth, the Kencyrath wasn't any kinder to those who lacked a means of attaining some sort of high status. Sometimes laughter was as deadly as any blade. "But you can't live like this, getting drunk all the time, letting people mock you and kick you."

"It pays well, man. I made five gold arax tonight. And I'm not getting drunk because they mock me; I'm getting drunk because I couldn't go before them sober."

"But … that comes to the same thing."

"No, it doesn't," said Grimly, with sad dignity. "And that's enough of me. What about you? What's your tale?"

The larger jug had proved to be ale. Tori poured himself a cupful. "I'm a clerk to Ran Harn."

"You don't carry yourself like a clerk."

"Oh?"

"I think you know how to fight."

"Well, I'm not a cadet."

Grimly gave an exasperated whine. "Talking to you is like trying to suck marrow out of a year-old bone! You told me who you are — and that's safe with me, truly — but where are you from?"

"North," said Tori, at last. "North of the Eastern Lands. North of East Kenshold."

"There's nothing there! That's the Haunted Lands."

"Yes," said Torisen. "It is. But there was a keep, where we lived."

Grimly's eyes were white around the edges, like a dog that smells fire. "'We?'"

"My father. My twin sister. Our Kendar. My mother … left. Father threw my sister out, when it became clear she was of the Old Blood."

"Meaning …?"

"She was a Shanir. She would have likely grown to have … well, magical powers, they'd say here in Kothifir."

Grimly placed one hand on the table. "Like this?"

The hand turned into the paw of a wolf. Torisen smiled faintly. "Not exactly. And I don't know what she would have become. Some Shanir can cure grave wounds, or make fire without a flint, or break another's will … ." His voice trailed off, and he suppressed a shudder. _I still dream about her. She terrified me sometimes_ , he wanted to say. But surely that was not what a man said about the sister he had not seen since she was seven years old? "She was brave and clever. But I have to assume she's dead now."

"And your father?"

"Dead. And all our people. All dead." He gulped down his ale and poured himself another cup.

Grimly was silent, watching him. "You're a cheery fellow. Now who's getting drunk?" he said, at last.

"Not I. Not on this stuff. It's like dishwater."

Grimly snorted. "I shouldn't have asked. Hey, would you like to hear some of my poetry?"

He'd heard it, passing the garden. But Grimly's face was full of eagerness, like a dog who sees a chance to go for a walk. "Why not? Say your own favorite piece. I can't promise to understand it, mind: I don't know much _rendish._ "

"I'll tell you the one I wrote about being a cub. To make it sound like a cub, it uses very simple language. Listen."

_"White the moon, and warm the den, and dark the winter night … ."_

Despite Grimly's promises, Torisen kept missing words. But Grimly's voice was as soothing and cozy as a fur blanket in the dead of winter, with the shutters closed and a fire on the hearth. Tori leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He was a child again, wrapped in a blanket and watching the shapes in the glowing coals, and there was a head pillowed on his chest, and his arm was over her back, a known shape, his other self: Jame. Father was off in the chamber with Mother, and their nurse Winter was humming to herself and knitting them stockings, and their bellies were full for once … .

"Watch it now," said Grimly. "You're about to pitch face first into your plate!"

"Sorry," mumbled Tori. "Good poem. Very soothing."

"So it seems! Look, there's a perfectly good bed over there. Let's get you into it."

The air was warm and moist and scented faintly with flowers, and a little more strongly with Grimly's wild musk. There was no fire, no winter wind howling outside. This was not the keep in the Haunted Lands, his hands were a mass of barely healed scars, and he would never see any of his family again. But somehow that all seemed distant, unimportant. He sat on the edge of the bed and let Grimly pull off his boots, then lay back on the good mattress and pillows and watched Grimly cover the dishes of food, latch the door, cover the window with the gauze curtains, and blow out the lamp.

"What about you?" Tori murmured.

Grimly's teeth flashed in the dimness as he grinned and then changed shape into a wolf. Tori's sense of peace was so complete that his heart didn't react at all as the wolver leapt for the bed. Grimly curled up along his side, between him and the rest of the world. "How's this?" he said, his voice a soft growl.

"Fine," said Tori, his eyes sliding shut. The last thing he remembered was the weight of Grimly's long head on his chest, where Jame's head used to rest.

 


End file.
